Britannica on drawing and quartering

The article on drawing and quartering published in 1926 in the 13th edition of theEncyclopædia Britannica provides a brief lurid history of those convicted of treason in England between the 13th and 19th centuries. The unknown author of this article, which has its roots in the 11th edition (1910–11), seems to have had little interest in fully identifying those who suffered this fate: “one Collingbourne” is William Collingbourne, who slandered (in part) Francis, Viscount Lovell, in the 1480s; “the Fenians Burke and O’Brien” are the Irishmen Thomas Francis Bourke and James Francis Xavier O’Brien; “Harrison the regicide” is Thomas Harrison, who was executed in 1660, long after he made possible the beheading of King Charles I. But why fill space with names when there are entrails to be described?

DRAWING AND QUARTERING

DRAWING AND QUARTERING, part of the penalty anciently ordained in England for treason. Until 1870 the full punishment for the crime was that the culprit be dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution; that he be hanged by the neck but not till he was dead; that he should be disembowelled or drawn and his entrails burned before his eyes; that his head be cut off and his body divided into four parts or quartered. This brutal penalty was first inflicted in 1284 on the Welsh prince David, and on Sir William Wallace a few years later. In Richard III.’s reign one Collingbourne, for writing the famous couplet “The Cat, the Rat and Lovel the Dog, Rule all England under the Hog,” was executed on Tower Hill. Stow says, “After having been hanged, he was cut down immediately and his entrails were then extracted and thrown into the fire, and all this was so speedily done that when the executioners pulled out his heart he spoke and said ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ ” Edward Marcus Despard and his six accomplices were in 1803 hanged, drawn and quartered for conspiring to assassinate George III. The sentence was last passed (though not carried out) upon the Fenians Burke and O’Brien in 1867. There is a tradition that Harrison the regicide, after being disembowelled, rose and boxed the ears of the executioner.